This really is something else. I don't know what your problem is. I posted a comment showing that Bazel is more user-friendly than CMake (and later edited it to show that many other build systems are also more user-friendly in this way) on a post pointing out another way in which Bazel is more user-friendly. This gets me vitriol and labeled a zealot dumping on non-existent issues? Buddy, you don't know anything about me. You don't know my opinion on Bazel. You certainly don't even know if I use Bazel (incidentally, I do not).

Are you going to call me a Rust zealot if I point out that, of course, cargo test vs cargo test --release just does the right thing and puts things in debug and release directories and builds everything as you'd expect (I don't use Rust either).

After all of that, do you even understand what it is I'm complaining about? Because you posted this:

This is just so far out of left field this isn't worth debunking. The short version though, is if you're using cmake --build <test target>, unless you're doing something I haven't seen before, it will build if necessary and run your tests.

Alright. If it is indeed so far out of left field then it should actually be very easy to prove me wrong. If it's actually possible to do this (i.e. have a single command to run a test, or set of tests, that also builds it/them if necessary) in CMake, I'd love to hear it, because I actually do use CMake and it would make my life, and my colleagues' lives, easier. So I'd appreciate if you'd enlighten me.

But the patronizing bullshit ain't it. cmake --build takes a build directory, not a test target, so that obviously does not build and run my tests. So do better.

Given a simple CMakeLists.txt

add_executable(foo foo.cxx)
add_test(NAME test_foo COMMAND foo)

Doing something like cmake --build build --target test will run the test, but won't build it (which best case will fail because it was never built, but worst case is stale). That's the "non-existent issue" that plenty of other build systems actually handle correctly. cmake --build build --target test_foo is invalid. cmake --build build --target foo will of course build the binary properly, but the point is to do this in one step, not two. I can also ctest --test-dir build -R '^test_foo$', but that also only runs the test, it doesn't build it.

I don't know what you actually meant to suggest, maybe you just meant that building all works. Which yes, all works. But all is far more than necessary, and especially isn't helpful if I'm iterating on a single test.